Today, there exist a few techniques for distribution of electronic coupons (e-coupons) to potential customers. A seller of a service or product can distribute mass email messages with e-coupons attached to or within the message. The seller then hopes that at least some of the potential customers who receive the messages will redeem the e-coupons included. Additionally, a seller can post an e-coupon on a web site, whether or not owned by the seller, and hope that a potential customer will see the e-coupon and choose to redeem it. Similar techniques exist for targeted distribution of coupons to attract potential customers who live local to a seller. For example, local restaurants or stores can attempt to attract customers on web pages local to a particular city. A city newspaper may have a website and these local sellers can post e-coupons on the site with the same hope of a customer seeing the e-coupon and choosing to redeem it.
Yet these and other techniques tend to be expensive to sellers and highly inefficient in attracting potential customers. The mass emails and e-coupon distribution carry a fixed cost based upon a hope that a potential customer exists. A seller must pay the website provider in order to put its e-coupons on the website, without any assurance at all that the e-coupons will be requested and redeemed by customers. Even existing location-aware wireless targeted advertising methods have a cost to transmit an advertisement when a mobile customer is around a particular store. A need exists to allow for distribution of an e-coupon when a desired profit margin for the seller has been statistically guaranteed.
Generally, potential customers choose a particular type of service or product and then seek to find the service or product based upon some need, whether such need is based on cost, ease of acquisition, location, or some other factor. Customer service can be enhanced if an e-coupon service were provided based upon an initial inquiry from the customer. In such an example, a seller has a substantially increased opportunity to ensure that an e-coupon is redeemed because the customer initiates the desire for the e-coupon rather than a random e-coupon being sent to a customer.
However, a seller needs additional safeguards to ensure that distributed e-coupons will be redeemed not only at a high probability, but also at an economic advantage to the seller. A seller wants to issue e-coupons so that a larger number of potential customers will redeem the e-coupons, because the seller has no economic incentive when one or a few customers actually redeem the e-coupons. Additionally, a seller needs to ensure that the distribution of e-coupons does not become economically ineffective by continually distributing e-coupons that are not redeemed.
In addition to business concerns, there are privacy concerns and technical issues often left unresolved in wireless targeted advertising and distribution systems. Privacy concerns have emerged from FCC requirements that wireless service providers must be able to identify the locations of cellular phone users making emergency calls after Oct. 1, 2001. The concern stems from the worry that wireless service providers will turn the FCC requirement into a source of profit. In particular, the wireless service providers could release the location information of mobile users to anyone wiling to pay for such information, including individuals or others who will mishandle this information.
Technical issues also exist from the standpoint of wireless service providers. In order for a participating seller to send a targeted advertisement to mobile users at a right time and in a right place, the location information of the mobile users must be accurate and monitored closely. To do so, all mobile devices must frequently send location data to the network, and thus cause significant uplink signaling traffic that may eventually overflow the network. The situation could get even worse if the location identification methods are network-based or network-assisted because they consume significant computing resources from the network.
Therefore, a need exists to allow for distribution of e-coupons to potential customers based upon an initial desire from the customer and an assurance for a seller to make extra profits in a statistical sense. Privacy concerns and technical issues also need to be addressed in order to promote location-aware mobile commerce in an optimal manner.